JC Denizens' Investment Advice??

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Regarding Elon Musk mentioning dogecoin on SNL:

It's unclear what was driving the dogecoin selloff. Perhaps investors wanted Musk to say something more supportive of the cryptocurrency. But more likely, there was some "buy the rumor / sell the news" strategy, trying to capitalize on investors' predictions coming true by selling high. Dogecoin traded so actively that Robinhood announced early Sunday morning it was having issues processing crypto trades and was working to resolve the problem.

Haha wow it's just the craziest thing, Robinhood.com's service not working the instant people need it the most. CRAZY!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I don't know why I never answered this before. My college roommate is getting a job with an investment company so I am going to see what we can do to throw some money at some safe investments. I wish I knew the difference between an index fund and a mutual fund but I don't, but hey, he's getting into that space so maybe he will know.

[Jizaboz]

Look at TDarcos coming out like William Devane!

"That's why I buy GOLD from ROSELAND CAPITOL..

..so ask yourself; are you safe?"

[Jizaboz]

Regarding Elon Musk mentioning dogecoin on SNL:

It's unclear what was driving the dogecoin selloff. Perhaps investors wanted Musk to say something more supportive of the cryptocurrency. But more likely, there was some "buy the rumor / sell the news" strategy, trying to capitalize on investors' predictions coming true by selling high. Dogecoin traded so actively that Robinhood announced early Sunday morning it was having issues processing crypto trades and was working to resolve the problem.

Haha wow it's just the craziest thing, Robinhood.com's service not working the instant people need it the most. CRAZY!

LOL yeah that service sucks. Binance allowed me to dump 2k DOGE instantly. Still holding about 500. Remember how I said QTUM went up? Well it started dropping today so I had to dump and shift again. Still gaining after the shift.. I can only imagine the shitstorm that hit Sunday for people that were not paying attention lol.

[Flack]

Regarding Elon Musk mentioning dogecoin on SNL:

It's unclear what was driving the dogecoin selloff. Perhaps investors wanted Musk to say something more supportive of the cryptocurrency.

Haha wow it's just the craziest thing, Robinhood.com's service not working the instant people need it the most. CRAZY!

There were at least three direct references to dogecoin on Saturday's show and none of them were super positive. In the opening monologue, Musk joked about giving his mom dogecoin for Mother's Day and then said "I could say something really shocking on live television... like, I drive a Prius." During the news segment, they brought Musk back out in a bit where Michael Che asked him "what is dogecoin?" over and over and each answer was super complicated. At the end Che said, "so it's a hustle?" and Musk shrugged and said, "it's a hustle." In a later western-themed skit, Musk joked about his tunneling thing and they compared dogecoin to gold. It didn't help that he came off as super awkward in every skit he was in.

[Jizaboz]

Also, on stocks I don't buy drug company stocks. Travel type stuff will definitely go up. Glad I bought Boeing shortly after Coronamania first started!

[odyssia76]

I'm no expert but have told some stuff by smart people I trust. All I can say is that if you do not max out your 401k contribution to the max that your company will match then you are very silly. Free money is free money, duh. use extra money for that before anything else. Just make sure you will be there long enough to vest. then pay down high interest debt and invest in index funds. I think tdarcos is wrong to advise gold. he makes some valid points but i think his strategy is only good if you are planning for the zombie apocalypse and need to trade for medical supplies or bullets or something. If you assume society will keep functioning then there are much better ways.

[odyssia76]

I'm no expert but have told some stuff by smart people I trust. All I can say is that if you do not max out your 401k contribution to the max that your company will match then you are very silly. Free money is free money, duh. use extra money for that before anything else. Just make sure you will be there long enough to vest. then pay down high interest debt and invest in index funds. I think tdarcos is wrong to advise gold. he makes some valid points but i think his strategy is only good if you are planning for the zombie apocalypse and need to trade for medical supplies or bullets or something. If you assume society will keep functioning then there are much better ways.

If I stumbled into couple hundred extra bucks and were otherwise investing wisely i might be tempted to gamble for big bucks and throw it into cryptocurrency but its very complicated and I wouldn't know how or what to buy u8nless there were an index fund for it or something. It seems it would be easy for simple folks to get burned.

[odyssia76]

oh oops double post

[bryanb]

I guess Paul and I are the only precious metals investors here. I'm not as bullish on gold as the Commander, but I do still have a small part of my portfolio in silver and gold (the old Burl Ives trade!). I like precious metals as an inflation hedge and because they can go up even when the stock market is flailing. They're generally good to own in times of trouble. I own ETFs rather than physical metals so I'm ill-prepared for the apocalypse scenario, but at least I am well-stocked on toilet paper.

One thing that surprised me when I was a young investor is that gold can go up or down quite dramatically even in the absence of high inflation. It's not an inherently safe, undramatic investment. As this table of gold prices shows, it's not unheard of for gold to go up or down 10-20% in a given year. Gold has tended to go up over time and will never go to 0, but it's hard to predict what direction it will move in the short term. I never leave the precious metals market completely, but I do take profits when I can.

[odyssia76]

I think to be honest Tdarcos has to agree that most of his points are only true if you have the actual cold hard metal in your hand or strongbox. Owning it as an investment that you have in name only seems like it would not be at all good for surviving hard times. No bandit raider is going to take your investments statement that you have gold as payment, he wants food and ammo.

I recall an interesting piece about gold on NPR though. makes sense why it is our trade metal.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011 ... insteinium

[bryanb]

Hard times doesn't have to mean the total breakdown of civilization as we know it, though. We've survived recessions, stock market crashes, and inflationary periods before with our government and society mostly intact, and those are often times when gold is a really handy thing to be invested in. I'm wary about owning the physical metal mostly because I hate the idea of thieves robbing my house and actually getting a good return on their time investment. They would need to use a wheelbarrow for the toilet paper and have to look really silly in the process.

[Casual Observer]

bryanb, are you saying that you've still got hoarded toilet paper? It was infuriating when the pandemic started and I couldn't buy any anywhere because people bought it all up.

[bryanb]

bryanb, are you saying that you've still got hoarded toilet paper? It was infuriating when the pandemic started and I couldn't buy any anywhere because people bought it all up.

Can you really blame me? Toilet paper is an excellent store of value, fungible, and more environmentally sustainable than Bitcoin. I can't believe you'd turn on me just because my preferred method of wealth accumulation happens to be a little unorthodox.

OK, so I'm mostly joking if that's not completely obvious by now. During the pandemic I have been trying to keep more than one package on hand because my years of living dangerously are behind me, but it hasn't reached extreme levels or anything.

[Jizaboz]

bryanb, are you saying that you've still got hoarded toilet paper? It was infuriating when the pandemic started and I couldn't buy any anywhere because people bought it all up.

Can you really blame me? Toilet paper is an excellent store of value, fungible, and more environmentally sustainable than Bitcoin. I can't believe you'd turn on me just because my preferred method of wealth accumulation happens to be a little unorthodox.

OK, so I'm mostly joking if that's not completely obvious by now. During the pandemic I have been trying to keep more than one package on hand because my years of living dangerously are behind me, but it hasn't reached extreme levels or anything.

Yeah, same here. Megaroll packages for me from now own. Americans be shittin. Had plenty of food for about 2 weeks but I still recalled that one day in the beginning only finding some tp at Walmart on a fresh pallet. Quickly grabbed one as some bitch said "Sir. SIR!" as I held up my one package of toilet paper and stormed off to checkout lol

[Tdarcos]

I'm not going to get into it, but Bitcoin isn't fungible, and what kind of moron thinks silver bars are a better investment than a house. Christ.

Let's consider the following Two men in South Vietnam in 1968 have about the equivalent of $1,000 each. One uses it as a down payment on a $6,000 house, which he can live in and after paying off the mortgage, someday resell (or his kids can). The other continues to rent an apartment but buys, say, about $1,000 in silver, which is about 45 pounds.

Three years later, in 1971, South Vietnam falls, the communists take over. The guy with the house has an "asset" worth nothing, because he can't sell it, and the Communists will probably confiscate it, leaving him with nothing. The guy with the silver has an asset he can hide, and with about 45 pounds of silver, can use some of it to bribe his way out of the country.

Over the last 120 years the United States has been a relatively stable, trouble-free country (by trouble I mean mass insurrections - like something ten times the size of the Rodney King or 1965 Watts Riot, combined - or civil war), but I'm talking about over very long periods of time and in lots of different places, liquid, transportable assets have always been a better choice in times of instability and trouble. But only physical assets have been guaranteed stores of value. Gold, silver and/or diamonds were the means of escape for Jews trapped in Nazi Germany, Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge, Cubans escaping in the '60s when Castro took over, Vietnamese boat people, and others.

When times are good and society is stable, paper money, real estate and cryptocurrencies are useful tools. But what happens if there's a disaster? A cyberattack on the grid destroys critical infrastructure, cutting of electricity to a big chunk of the country and rebuilding it will take four or five months, people can't use cryptocurrencies, and they might lose faith in paper money. And who wants to buy a house in an area with no electricity? You can buy houses cheap right now in Detroit where there is almost no functioning government, and nobody is buying them.

Again, over all civilizations, and all times, over the long term, only "money" that met the Seven Rules retained value and did not become worthless. That has been precious metals.

[Tdarcos]

Please note, I specifically did not say to go "hog wild" and use gold for one's entire investment strategy. I said that 10% was useful as a store of value and an inflation/devaluation hedge long term as in "buy and hold for twenty years" sort of investment. Or in the alternative, use "cost averaging" in which you buy more over the years when the price goes down, but buy less when it goes up.

The way I see it, it can't go down to zero, and long term, over the last 50 years - since 1971 - it has gone up an average of 100% a year (35*51 is slightly less than 1800.). Here, I predicted a more conservative estimate of 10% a year, meaning in 20 years $20,000 now will be worth about $130,000. For someone in their 40s or younger, buying a few thousand in gold is a safe investment that can't go to zero, has half a century of year-over-year growth, and is an excellent piece of an investment strategy.

There are, of course, other investments and if you have a high degree of risk tolerance, cryptocurrencies could be worthwhile, as long as you consider it more like extreme speculation or gambling than a true "investment." And diversify, don't have everything in just one cryptocurrency. You might pick the wrong one that becomes worthless.

For those with less tolerance for risk, a good no-load mutual fund might be a better choice, if you don't think you can be good on stock picks.

[Casual Observer]

Yeah, same here. Megaroll packages for me from now own. Americans be shittin. Had plenty of food for about 2 weeks but I still recalled that one day in the beginning only finding some tp at Walmart on a fresh pallet. Quickly grabbed one as some bitch said "Sir. SIR!" as I held up my one package of toilet paper and stormed off to checkout lol

At one point in California all I could find to buy were colored paper napkins, ouch.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Here is the thing I don't get about gold. I would like to understand it!

Let's say you are invested in it but don't have the actual metal at your house. Society crumbles. Are we expected to go to wherever the metal is stored and show them a printout of what we have invested and get it?

Let's say that you do have the metal and it's in a strong box at the bank. Society collapses. You can't even get into the bank to retrieve it.

You have to do what Bryan B. alluded to and keep it at home, right?

[Casual Observer]

Think if society falls apart then lead (bullets) would be more valuable than gold.